What My Body Remembers

What My Body Remembers Liddy Grantland (bio) surgery 1, 2011: panties "Menses?" Dr. K asked, every 3 months, for four years. Looking at my mom. "Not yet!" she'd say. You'll be the first to know!" I remember thinking that I would be the first to know. I remember wearing white cotton Fruit of the Loom panties to my first surgery, along with gray pajama pants and a school t-shirt. A shitty sports bra. When I write "Epiphysiodesis (R leg)" on intake forms as an adult, most of the professionals I talk to haven't heard of it. This surgery was timed at the tail end of puberty to stop the growth in my longer (right) leg so that the shorter (left) leg could catch up—leg length discrepancy being a common result of a crooked spine, like mine. By the time I was done growing, the thinking went, they'd be the same length. That would in turn help my back brace, which I'd been wearing 24/7 for nearly four years at that point, do its job of straightening my spine all the quicker and easier. The nurse who handed me my hospital gown, hairnet, and grippy socks said I should take off my bra, but I could keep my underwear on. I did. It was cold in the room, and I was trembling. Sometimes, these days, I have dreams where I am stuck for hours, just stuck in a room, waiting for a door to open and for the bad thing to happen. Wanting to just get it over with, wanting anything but to be waiting. A lot of times, in these dreams, I am waiting with my mom, and she is wearing my gold cross necklace that I only took off for x-rays and surgeries, and she is scared. I am scared, too, of the door opening, and of whatever is behind it, but I am trying to keep her from knowing that. I remember looking at my mother and wishing I could cry in her arms, could say, "Please, don't make me do this. It's going to hurt, and I am so afraid." In this scenario, my legs and my back and everything else wrong with my body would magically be fixed, or never would have been a problem in the first place, and my body would be good and whole and painless. But that scenario was not just magical thinking because I understood that my body would only be better if I ran the gauntlet of these scary horrible painful things. I understood that it would break my mother's heart, to tell me what I already knew, that the horrible painful things had to happen even though I was afraid. It would mean admitting that I am not okay to a person whose only wish is to make a world where I am okay. And I was okay, I am. It's just, I wish it could have felt like it was okay to tell her if I wasn't. Instead, I remember cracking jokes with about the grippy socks and hairnet every time. I remember in every surgery, the tech spraying on this freezing numbing spray, which I guess was supposed to blunt the feeling of searching for a vein. You're not supposed to eat or drink after midnight the night before, so you're already hungry and thirsty, and then someone is unhelpfully telling you (a child) that you're End Page 127 dehydrated and that's why it's hurting so much and taking so long to find a vein. I remember feeling dizzyingly relieved when they finally found one and sent something calming into my system, finally sending me into the cold bright place where they had me count down, quitting counting a few seconds before I was sleeping because I was so ready to be asleep. When I awoke from my first surgery, my first thought was, my knee hurts. I remember my mom telling Dr. K, red, damp, and in scrubs, rather than his usual button-down with his white coat, that my knee was hurting. He said, "That can...